Dance In The Rain

~3~ Deer In Headlights

"She gave it to you this morning to put back?"

"Yeah"

Holden is completely annoyed as he stuffs the papers back into his folder and puts them back in his bag. "Go get dressed for the day."

"Am I in trouble?"

"You should be," he snaps. "You should have come to me and told me—But I know why you didn't. You ever root through my school bag without permission again, I'll spank you, ground you, and give you a failing grade on whatever test it is. No exceptions. I clear?"

"Yessir"

"Go," he says darkly, and I turn on my heels and leave his room, my heart racing faster than a deer galloping away.

~*~

Kenna comes through the door and immediately looks at me. I simply nod, and she accepts that as 'all is good'

She goes into the kitchen and smiles at Holden, grading at the worn table.

"Hey Holden"

"Hey Kenna," he says, trying hard not to act angry with her as he keeps his eyes on the paper he's working on. "How was your weekend?"

"Boring. My grandma made me go to the flea-market in Streetor. Why she needs more crap is beyond me."

Holden doesn't crack a smile as he continues marking more things wrong on the paper. Finally he lets out a sigh of disgust and looks over at Tate, playing a video game.

"Tatum!"

Tate jumps slightly at his tone, and then collects himself. "I cannot tell you how much I hate my full name. Knock it off!"

"I cannot tell you how much I hate that you study for NOTHING and fail EVERYTHING! Knock it off!" Holden snaps as he holds up the test, decorated in red, angry ink.

Tate knows enough to stay quiet and actually look ashamed of himself, but we all hear him mutter "at least I didn't cheat."

Kenna's face turns white and Holden pretends like he didn't hear him as he gets out the next test.

Which happens to be Kenna's. Did he plan that?

He starts grading and Kenna pretends like she doesn't notice as she goes to the fridge and grabs a La Croix.

She opens it up and takes a sip, and casually sits at the table next to me.

Holden gets to the wrong answer, and acts bored as he silently marks it with red.

Kenna sees that she gets it wrong, and tilts her head in confusion. She watches Holden with intent now as he finishes grading, and he pretends to be oblivious. She looks at me with questioning eyes as he writes '-1 with at 97 A' at the top.

"I got an answer wrong?" She asks in confusion as Holden pretends to be surprised that she was watching him.

"Uh, yeah. That's awesome, Kenna! This was a hard test. Great job."

"Wait, how did I get that wrong? Has everybody gotten that answer wrong?"

Even though I know he knows, he genuinely looks confused as he tilts his head. "It hasn't been one most have missed, no."

"Wait, I don't understand. How did I get it wrong?" She blurts out, getting frustrated.

Holden raises his eyebrows in faux shock and shrugs his shoulder.... "Because? Your answer didn't even make sense. It was a true or false, and you answered with a date."

Kenna opens her mouth in equal parts annoyance and confusion, and then looks at the answer key. "And your answer key is right?"

"Is my answer key right? Well... yeah. I mean, this one is..I made a typo on the last one and fixed it......"